Playin' with avatars

Mind the gap. 

After a day of Internet inactivity due to technical difficulties, I am back once more.  Tonight, I've been playing with different avatar concepts of myself.  No, not that ridiculous James Cameron film, I mean avatar representations of real world persona. 

My first experiment was through Yahoo.  Here it is:

 Yeah, I know it's blurry.  You can't even see the whole thing either, but this is the only download I was able to get.  Peaking up just beneath the bottom edge are the eyes of my boy, Chewie.  Yes that is the Millennium Falcon in the background.  Thought it completed the look.  I must say I look quite fetching in the Star Wars outfit.  Should come as no surprise that I'm a much better looking guy in cyberspace than I am in real life.

Next, I tried my hand at a site called Stortroop:

Not bad.  But I think that Yahoo got a closer depiction of me in terms of face, hair, and eyes.  One cool thing about Stortroop is that it's an outlet for all the fashionistas out there.  You can trade clothes on and off, trying different styles and whatnot.  The avatar above is the closest approximation I could make to my "style," that is to say if I even have one.

There is something very philosophical about all of this.  We never seem to want what we have. My hair is a wavy, curly mop that turns into an afro if it's not kept short.  This is especially true in the summer time.  I tried to grow long, Metallica-type hair but what I got was a Greg Brady 'fro.  All I ever wanted was straight hair.  In turn, I've been told by several people that they'd love to have my natural curls. 

Well they could have them.  If we could swap hairstyles as easily as we can with these avatars, I'd be all over it.  It also allows you to experiment without fear of consequence.  Indulge your xenophilia, you can always hit "start over" if you are unsatisfied.  Then again, we tend to create idealized versions of ourselves with editors such as these.  Just look at the avatars running around in SecondLife.  That is by no means a derogatory statement towards SecondLife denizens.  As a matter of fact, I've been meaning to get active in that world for a quite a while now.  I just never seem to get around to it.

Anyway, avatar editors such as allow us to tweak what we have into what we want.  Of course we may then find that having can sometimes be nowhere near as fun as wanting.


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